AirTran Airways A+ Rewards - Delay for connecting passengers? Responsibility?

I am on an AirTrain flight from MKE to SFO that is delayed for 1.5-2 hours waiting for connecting passengers. These connecting passengers apparently were on a flight that was diverted to another airport on another airline (Frontier). Why would AirTran take such a large delay for this? Is it their responsibility to re-route these passengers who showed up late on an interline connection? Why?

Normally, I would expect it to be AirTran's problem if the inbound flight were their own and delayed because of their own failure (e.g. mechanical) but I don't understand taking a large delay for another airline. The rest of the week is sold on MKE/SFO, but isn't it Frontier's problem to reroute?

From the perspective of the MKE/SFO direct passenger this seems like a large delay at the airline's discretion.

I think you have some bad information on the cause of your delay being an inbound Frontier flight.

(1) Frontier and AirTran do not interline and have not for a few years. If AirTran had to displace some of their own passengers onto another airline who were suposed to be flying XXX-MKE-SFO, it's rather unlikely they'd put them on Frontier since there's no interline agreement.

(2) If travelers (for whatever highly unlikely reason) originally booked XXX-MKE on Frontier and MKE-SFO on AirTran, they would have had to do so on two separate itinerary becuase of no interline agrement. In this circumstance it's very unlikely AirTran would delay to handle incoming Frontier passengers if they even knew about them...which is unlikely due to separate itin.

(3) Frontier has cut so far back there are very few inbound XXX-MKE flights on Frontier likely to have connects heading to SFO. And I don't see that any of those diverted.

I don't believe you're holding for passengers off of another airline.

What you're likely holding for is inbound connects from an AirTran inbound flight from Minneapolis. A MSP-MKE flight on AirTran which left MSP at 6:30pm diverted to Grand Rapids. It is suppsed to land about 9:15pm. It seems very likely this is who you're waiting for.

No matter who the inbound connections are coming from, however, it doesn't really matter. Holding for connections is an "airline-controllable" delay like a mechancial delay or a delay for late crew. Passengers are entitled to compensation for airline-controllable delays at a certain threshold, including things like meal voutures and overnight hotel stays. A delay of an hour or two isn't long enough to trigger any such compensation, however.

Thank you. It is the MSP flight. An agent was confused as it is hard to understand why a flight going MSP-MKE would go divert to Grand Rapids which is far out of the way.

Thanks for the quick response.

FL's MSP-MKE http://flightaware.com/live/flight/TRS1788/history/20120528/2332Z/KMSP/KMKE diverted to GRR for fuel http://flightaware.com/live/flight/TRS1788/history/20120529/0125Z/KGRR/KMKE due to a strong storm front with high winds in MKE. If you were in the gate area you saw the winds and the many aircraft waiting for takeoff clearance on 25L. The inbound LGA was also orbiting near GRR for the same reason but did make MKE albeit late. http://flightaware.com/live/flight/TRS1889/history/20120528/2245Z/KLGA/KMKE

Over twenty connections to SFO were on that MSP flight with *no way* to get them to SFO on FL before Wed evening. Thus your flight, per flightaware took a 83 minute delay.


By the way, CAK http://flightaware.com/live/flight/TRS331/history/20120529/0159Z/KMKE/KCAK and LAS http://flightaware.com/live/flight/TRS7/history/20120529/0210Z/KMKE/KLAS flights also held for a large number of connections.

Normally I wouldn't be as indepth.. but if you follow all the tracking links and note the weather radar you'll be more informed.

You are flying higher and faster than planned... http://flightaware.com/live/flight/TRS1686/history/20120529/0120Z/KMKE/KSFO On arrival that delay appears to have been cut to 48 mins.

Since the OP has HKG as home I hope he or she didn't book a short connection on an international flight with different airlines.